The Empty Sriracha Bottle Trick You Need To Know

Are you a huge Sriracha fan? It was pretty much THE trendy condiment of the 2010s, although the ubiquitous red rooster bottle (Huy Fong, the OG sriracha brand) has actually been around since the '80s. Whether you still slather the red stuff all over everything you eat, even ice cream (yes, you can do this! according to the Rock Hill Herald, a sriracha sundae has been a hit at the South Carolina State Fair), or whether you've got a lone Sriracha soldier languishing at the back of your fridge, there's something you need to know before you get to the bottom of the next bottle. Don't throw that bottle out!

The first thing you can do with that not-quite-empty bottle is to take a tip from Chowhound and add a little bit of a neutral-flavored oil. Plain old vegetable oil will be fine, but grapeseed or peanut oil work too. Shake up your Sriracha bottle, and voilà! You have spicy chile oil you can use in salad dressings, sauces, and of course stir-fries. Or you could do like this one Redditor suggests, adding honey and oil to the bottle to make "the best salad dressing ever." But wait, that's not all! Even when your Sriracha bottle is 100 percent empty, there are still a few uses to which it can be put.

An entire Reddit thread was devoted to re-using old Sriracha bottles to hold cooking oil, as the squeeze tip allows you to pour out just the amount of oil you want instead of a too-big glug from its original bottle. The Sriracha2Go website also suggests using the Sriracha bottle to hold other sauces and dressings, and one clever Facebook user repurposed hers as a water bottle. You could even use the Sriracha bottle (once you've washed it out thoroughly!) to hold liquid soap, shampoo, or moisturizer to add a little touch of kitschy retro-hipster chic (so 2010!) to your bathroom.

If you're willing to hack into the Sriracha bottle with a scissors or knife, you can cut it down to the desired height and use it as an organizer to hold pens, pencils, and other desktop necessities, or perhaps makeup brushes and hair accessories. Use it as a flower vase, or fill it with soil to use as a planter for kitchen herbs. Wow, looks like there are as many ways to use an empty bottle of Sriracha as a full one! And if that's not a good excuse to go out and buy a whole bunch more, we don't know what is.